Revanches and Reversions (but No Revisions)
by Quillon42
Summary: Envisions an alternate reality in which the Asian Psylocke and European Kwannon come to clean closure with a restoration of proper mind to proper body...the corporeal commerce occurring, of course, in the very "Shoppe" which started it all. Also features a particular luck-laden throwback from the Eighties and some of his supporting crew as well.


REVANCHES AND REVERSIONS (BUT NO REVISIONS)

By Quillon42

SOMETIME IN 1991 IN THE MOJOVERSE

A circular stage had appeared before the unenhanced eyes of an as-of-now Asianified Betsy Braddock, just as it had in so many dreams she'd experienced in the past.

Unlike all of her other subconscious soirees, however, in which said surface was populated by proudly-standing synthetic steeds—the lady riding or striding amongst all sorts of carousel horses—here said plastic ponies were prone and pummeled on the ground, each's face shrouded to boot in exotic masks that ranged from mundanely human to insanely demonic.

The golden-skinned, violet-tressed Betsy found herself in her perpetual navy blue combat leotard, and also found herself bound to what must have been the hub of the carousel, she tied by strings of lights that would have illuminated the ride in a happier dream.

And then a spotlight blinked on, sounded a split-second later.

Betsy looked across, ahead and to the left of her, to espy a spiteful spirit spinning in place, her hair's whitish wisps and her torso's stupefying six arms belying the magnificent dancer's body that resided at the center. The samurai helmet atop the foe's head seemed a travesty of something out of the East, as if its wearer were an impostor to the Japanese culture…

_…but then,_ Elisabeth thought to herself as she continued to struggle against that which bound her, _isn't that what I am, inhabiting this stranger's body for all this time, as well?_

Before she could ruminate on it any longer, the spiteful spinner: "Well…Betsy," the figure started, as she slowed down her gyrations, "it appears that, although you are to be our guest of honor for this evening…you are a mite bit uncomfortable in your privileged place of vantage."

Then another, harsher, much more horrible voice replaced the first.

"Perhaps you're a bit cold…or lonely?!

"Not to fret: It's PRIME TIME…and things are about to become…rather heated in here!"

Elisabeth's beautiful, borrowed Asian features shunted over to directly dead ahead as another, much larger spotlight erupted into existence. Situated there—with emphasis on the "sit"—was none other than the massive, malodorous matzo ball whom she held partly responsible for the artificial optic orbs that served as her eyes in the Eighties…

…back when she had her original, purple-maned British body.

"_Mojo,_" Betsy spat at the globe of goon that was her captor from times before. Immediately the warrior imagined wrapping her carousel bonds around the monster's meaty throat.

"Now what kind of greeting is that…for someone who once gave you such a precious pair of peepers…" blubbered the ball of bearshit that was the monarch of the Mojoverse. "I expected more manners from such a noble…courtesan of Nyoirin such as yourself."

Betsy had no idea what Mojo was talking about with that last—and it registered freely on her face. The aforementioned dancer from another dimension decided to fill her in.

"Oh, ex-precious-peepers looks so confused…" she whined in her worst Motherese. "You're not in one of your delicate little carousel dreams! No, no…or rather, 'Noh,' should I say, as in the name of time-honored Japanese theatre…as you presently occupy the Mojoverse's counterpart to such a stage!

"Awww, don't worry, my little Bushido Betsy…" continued the multiple-armed interloper, spinning more and more madly as she spoke, "you're gonna get all the answers you ever wanted, real real soon!"

"Indeed, Spiral," cut in the pygmy planet of pigeonpoop that was Mojo. "It's only fair that the lady whose arrival so many of us have been so eagerly anticipating…

"…is apprised of what is to befall her…before she herself…befalls!"

A third, rightmost spotlight smacked on before Betsy, the woman looking on horrified as she beheld for the first time her own, past self, in a configuration other than any identical one as caught in the reflection of a mirror…this one dressed in a skintight carnation-and-lavender costume, and standing next to what appeared to be a Japanese gangster with what appeared to be an onyx airfaring raccoon in midflight, for a mullet of hair.

(Nevermind.)

"I don't…I don't understand…"

"You may have been a rather pondering, pontificating-ass Psylocke these past several months,"

said Spiral, as she pointed a sword in one of her right limbs at the lady, "endeavoring so much to ascertain everything that's happened…what occurred exactly with your old body…who exactly was responsible for all of this."

And then the evil ivory-haired imp gave Elisabeth the flesh-trading, flesh-crawling facts of it all.

The short version of it now: Elisabeth in European form went through the Siege Perilous back in the Outback, along with a few of her fellow Xers, to escape some roustabouts called the Reavers.

Her fair figure emerged in the East, unconscious on a dock in Japan, where a violet-tressed kunoichi named Kwannon found her. Kwannon was in the employ—and was also the object of affection—of an evil man named Nyoirin, who ran a gang rivaling that of the abovementioned mutated mistake of a mullet named Matsu'o Tsurayaba.

One small bone of contention between the two crimelords was the fact that they both wanted the same lady. Nyoirin, however, was only in a position to make war, with Kwannon as his pawn…whereas Matsu'o was in the very enviable position to make love, with Kwannon as his partner.

This brought about a forced duel of honor somehow between Matsu'o and Kwannon, with the latter falling from a great height and suffering the most serious of cerebral consequences in the process. The mean mullet, mortified by this turn of events, reached out to the ethically-absent-yet-mystically-adept Spiral for assistance. The devilish dancer, superhuman in the art of sorcery, had arranged an exchange in which Kwannon's mind migrated from her broken body and into that of the literally-washed-up European Psylocke's, and vice versa in turn. The transfer of Betsy's mind into Kwannon's body apparently healed the latter, and with the help of Wolverine, an obnoxiously-omnipresent fighter with even more fucked-up follicles than Matsu'o (if it could be imagined), Asian Betsy barged her way back to the Western Hemisphere to become a very-made-over X-Man for the Nineties.

Kwannon, meanwhile, had maintained her European-figured pose, her mind staying within the white body of Betsy Braddock, and she continuing in this form under the employ of Nyoirin. In the Earth-616 reality with which we are all acquainted, a whole huge series of happenings, even more convoluted than this author's vocabulary, occurred between the mauve maidens, they eventually discovering through so many garish Kubert-canvas-concocted brawls the origin of their swap of selves, as explained above. This came to an end with Nyoirin assassinated by the surly Tsurayaba, Kwannon within her Braddock-body tearing the eyes out after having found they were forged by Mojo to spy on the X-Men, and Kwannon within said form succumbing ever-so-deus-ex-machinistically to the Legacy Virus, a disease designed to cut down chaff characters ever so conveniently in Earth-616—a prime example being the Occidentally-appearanced-Kwannon, as the Machine found it had to euthanize the mercilessly mind-boggling, cruelly-confounding narrative between the purply princesses (which this author reluctantly admits was probably for the best, as migraine-making as the story was…and European Kwannon, also known as Revanche, was apparently not as sellingly sexy as Asian Psylocke anyway).

Upon listening to the sickeningly sinuous account, Betsy's head was spinning metaphorically, was revolving at a rate greater than those once-proud plastic ponies could have ever clocked in their constant circumnavigait around that childhood carousel hub of which she would ordinarily dream. At the moment, however, the only "mares" she beheld were those of the "night" kind, as Mojo and Spiral ushered her once more into another pompous pageant of perdition.

"You don't have to get it all at once," assured her cream-maned captor as she stretched her six sword-wielding arms, idly and alternatingly. "In fact, you really don't have to get it at all…none of it will matter in a moment, at least not for _you_, given that you're about to…lose your mind, in a literal sense."

"What do you mean!" shouted an exasperated Elisabeth. Really she was not as flustered as she let on; she knew she only needed so many more minutes to work through this extra-strength decorative wiring with what felt was now a very weakened psychic knife, in light of her depleted state.

"My dear little brat of a Braddock," put in Mojo, he clicking the lengthened nails of his diabolical digits ever so eerily. "Always such a spitfire, you've been, through and through. We'll all of us miss that…now that the series we've all known and loved of late as the new and improved, Chop Socky Psylocky is going to be so abruptly, unceremoniously CANCELLED."

This last line was so horrifically honky on the pallid pustule's part that Matsu'o, the European-bodied Kwannon, and even Mo's perennial pal Spiral chanced an askance look the creature's way.

"_What?!"_

Just a chuff from Spiral and otherwise rolled eyes organic and bionic alike from the rest of the company. For once in his enormous-ego-and-everything-else existence, Mojo was dumbfounded and could say nothing.

After about another saturated pulse of silence, the six-armed siren once more: "That which our Himalaya of a host is trying to get out—ever so _tactfully_—is that we are planning, Betsy, on taking advantage of your former precious prissy Anglo curves one more time…in a fair exchange, in which everyone from your counterpart Kwannon here, to her man Matsu'o, to my miserable master Mojo, to especially my very own gleeful gluteus is going to benefit in a most banditlike fashion. Yep, we'll all make out rather well from what's to transpire—which is unfortunately far more than any of us can say for you."

For a second, it struck Elisabeth a mote strange that it was only the inhabitants of this universe who were doing all the talking. It then hit her—as if she really needed reminding, with all the bodily manipulations done to her in this world—that the mountain mofo Mojo could easily divest or distort one of his or her sensory capacities, as for example Bets herself, when she was back in that figure configured across the stage from her now, had the mouth spread into a freakish smile and the eye sockets stretched so as to fit in the abovementioned pair of bionically-enhanced peepers.

It was alright, in a way, as said Mofo and his Spiraling assistant were more than Betsy could take at the moment, on the whole.

"Let's just cut most evisceratingly to the chase, shall we?" Mojo rumbled on up, several paces closer to Elisabeth, as he finished this last sentence. "The main event in prime time this evening involves, first, a drama to bring tears to the eyes, be they birthborn or bionic…a reuniting of lovers in body and in soul. For a few years now"—the landslide of lard pointing to his left, where Betsy's purloined body and its roadkill mullet lover were huddled, "Matsu'o on one hand, and Kwannon all cooped up in your stodgy old body, Miss Braddock, they pined for one another, yearning to be together again…and indeed, they have been together again of late…but it just hasn't been the same.

"You see, Kwanny, and 'Matta,' as she calls him, they miss all the trappings of their old relationship. The coming together of the minds, and the souls…it just isn't enough for them. They've always been a very…visceral couple, in everything in which they've engaged in their adrenalin-addled existences, you know.

"So what it takes to make them whole? Elisabeth: They need you…and not you, technically!"

"To get to the point—fi-yin-fucking-al-ly," cut in Spiral, nearly literally, with a sword just past Mojo's face, "the two of them need what you've got on you right now. We're planning to put Kwans back right, set her mind and spirit once more into that shapely-ass figure-eight that she knew all her life till recently—and which you done appropriated these past several seasons."

Betsy wanted badly to break free and shove her psychic knife up where the Mojoan moon didn't shine on Spiral…but the carousel bonds were still a bit away from being broken through and she wanted the devious dancer to live long enough to be given a piece of the wisteria woman's mind at any rate. So the heroine said nothing, and just continued to sit, stew, and saw away in secret.

Spiral went on. "You don't look too excited, my lady…but of course I'm sure you know it's 'cause there's a rather untoward catch in the midst of all of this.

"What Mojo and I get is the Hand's service, to assist in our impending conquest of all worlds within our ken. Both of the lovers before you will make excellent lieutenants in our arm, we believe.

"What's also most delicious…is that your own, European form…Betsy…becomes my very own plaything, for me and my extra limbs to do what for as we please.

"Yes, Kwannon and Matsu'o are gonna be reunited, indeed—and the ratings for the feature presentation will be through the telosphere but good—but you see, what'll make it extra special is the impending execution we have planned on the schedule as well…programmed not to preempt, but rather arranged to accompany the lovers' reunion. The fact is, our precious little Sucker Bet:

"While Kwanny and Matta bond so gratifyingly, you, my love, will bow out most gracelessly."

The maddened maid continued to rave about what was going to be done to Elisabeth, the area past the stage now illuminated as Betsy beheld a revilingly revamped version of the Body Shoppe upon which Spiral prided herself, and inside which so many involuntary victims had been warped into whatever kitschy calamities the Shoppe's mistress had deemed they should become.

Only thing was, it seemed as the young lavender assassin looked across at dangling hooks and whirring blades and shrieking drills and rusted manacles and (even more) binding chains and confining bodypods, this time Miss Braddock wasn't going to emerge from the metamorphosis as a coherent whole. No, as the young woman then espied what appeared to be a shimmering-screened television set with the name ELISABETSY scrawled across in the starkest static, she understood where would be the final resting place of her mind and soul.

"Enter now…the TELLY OF ETERNAL TORMENT!"

It made for enough of a shock to stop the violet-maned, British-minded, Japanese-bodied badassette from continuing to saw at her carousel wires a moment. It made for enough of a triumph for Mojo and Spiral to revel in the moment for a spell, the former applauding while the latter bowed and flourished out with all six arms to thank the gross globe of an organism for all the props.

And it made for an opening for the other purple potentate to strike out with the first of the psychic projectiles which no Mojoversians were aware she could conjure. In a trice the cream-skinned kunoichi that was the English-figured Kwannon flung out with so many glowing fuchsia psychic kunai knives, about ten or so and scattered, but all of which found purchase in the thick, titanic hide of the monstrous master of ceremonies after whom this world was named.

Cowed by the surprise assault as well as by the mystically-numbing effects of the small mentally-manufactured blades stuck in him, Mojo seemingly took forever to turn around and unleash the concussive force blast with which he wished to cancel his contract and annihilate Kwannon. "CUT!" he cried, attempting to maintain control over the "scene" which was not going the way he wished to direct it, not at all.

Because the creature was now as slow as the disgusting alien slug he resembled, his shot only occupied the empty space which his target and her love had occupied about twenty seconds before.

Two seconds later, Spiral tensed her legs into a position to spring out against these traitors to the Mojoverse, with Kwannon and Matsu'o paying her due attention and the former ready to mindfully whisk up another weapon against the hateful shrew…when of a sudden the sullen samurai helmeted harridan was hushed down into the ground directly underneath where she was standing, her presence replaced an instant later only by a circular shadow the size and shape of the spotlight which announced her appearance minutes back.

The semi-nefarious noir-ninjas of Nippon that were Matta and Kwann looked upon this for a lingering instant, perhaps a bit too long as Mojo shifted slothfully and unleashed another blast from his hovering, warfaring recliner right in their direction…

…a shot which again ended up blasting through empty space, which miffed the madman to no end. "PLACES, PEOPLE!" Mojo screamed, lashing out seemingly in slow-motion with his lengthy claws. "Rewrites were NOT negotiable for this scene! You two KNEW that when you signed onto this project!"

Even as these words were oozing out of the pile of pusillanimity before them, the thing was being girded swiftly and viciously by another electrified magenta psychic energy signature, as Kwannon wrapped her psychic manrikigusari chain, with thistle-toned weights at either end, around the tubby terror, numbing and immobilizing him further.

"I REFUSE TO…work under these…condissshhhuuuggghhhhh…"

And the boorish blob blubbered no more as Kwannon pressed hard into his neck a psychic kakute—a ring kunoichis used to drug or kill their victims, up very close—here the quaint item knocking the terrible tyrant out for a loop. As this happened, Matsu'o drove his bionic hand deep into the cannon barrel in the lower center of the monster's seating mechanism, ensuring that no laser blast spasms would ensue incidentally from Mojo's being dragged down into oblivion so roughly and abruptly.

The two then looked back to Betsy, who was standing over and watching carefully over the circle-shadow through which Spiral just as suddenly vanished.

"Thanks for the save," Kwannon said to her semi-self, referring to the fact that, just after finally breaking free of her carousel wires which restrained her both physically and powerswise, Elisabeth immediately pulled one of those fooling images on Mojo in which the latter thought that the targets of his cannon were standing in one place, when in actuality they were safely off to the side, out of view and harm's way, and ready to strike at an undefending, unassuming attacker. Psylockes of all shades pulled this trick, like, every other issue.

"Anything for me," Betsy replied, without turning her head, to her literal soulmate from just across the Prime Meridian. "You, in turn, didn't have to…"

"Yes, I did."

The golden-skinned Elisabeth turned to face other two.

"I couldn't stand to see not only my own body about to be manipulated once more, by these demonic dunderheads…I could not bear to watch a woman, who went through everything I had on this particular wavelength, lose her mind and soul for all time."

To this Betsy nodded and waved in appreciation. "I am sure you are in agreement with me, then…that since we're at the locus of where this all began…we should try and make it right again."

Absolutely no peep of protest came from Kwannon on that note.

Elisabeth then turned once more, directing her attention for the moment back to what lay at her feet. She was still so fixated on this…manhole which just materialized and swallowed Spiral. _Who or what caused this to happen?_ she wondered. Betsy looked over to Kwannon and Matsu'o and found them both equally mystified. "Did you…did you guys know that Spiral was going to…?"

"No idea," said Matta as he flexed the fingers in his mechanical hand and groaned. Placing his fist into anything owned by Mojo was far slimier than any Double Dare physical challenge imaginable. "Maybe Mojo's theater floor malfunctioned, or something. Guess we got lucky on that."

Luck indeed was the word, as after all, in this 'verse, (and unlike a terrible Sinatra tune with a similar name), Luck be a _lad_, with a mullet sunnier than Matsu'o's, as well as a sparkle in his eye to outshine Shatterstar's. And it was this same sparkly mullet who swung in just now most swashbucklingly onto the stage, the skinny blond alien dropping down right next to the three Earthlings and giving them a look as if to apologize for being late for what was supposed to be his major scene.

This man was known to others and even to himself by only one name (at least in this rendition of Machine reality).

"Longshot," Betsy said, extending an able Asian hand the man's way.

The latecomer to both the Eighties X-Men, as well as to this scene right now, dusted himself off, shot a glance to the mysterious manhole-shadow off to the side. Then he looked to the woman greeting him and his brow furrowed.

"Do I know you…?"

Elisabeth paused, then realized she had forgotten herself, especially when Longs looked over to Kwannon in the white body and waved hello. "Hey, Betsy!" he cried to Matsu'o's mistress, Longshot completely oblivious to what was going on between the lilac-follicled ladies.

"Nope…over here."

When the bombastic, blond-mulleted alien X-Men turned again, he was met with an embrace by the Asian iteration of Psylocke as that body, in which Betsy of course really resided right now, explained in the next several moments everything that had happened thus far.

"And so we thought that…given the appearance of that strange opening over there, and that none of _us_ had anything to do with that," Psylocke said, motioning first to herself, then to Matsu'o and Kwannon, then finally to the manhole, "maybe you came through in your usual serendipitous manner."

"Oh, I did…" replied Longshot, scratching the back of his Mojo-crafted cranium, "but, to be honest, I was really here for something…someone else."

And then the hands of that "someone" emerged from the edges of the hole. Long abruptly ran and slid over to help an attractive, black-haired woman climb up and out. Then the two hugged tightly and kissed passionately.

_He always had a way with the birds, that one,_ Betsy mused to herself, thinking of how Longshot's two hearts always paired off to conquer so many dames. It was stymieing how this heroin-addled-Rod-Stewart-resembling stringbean could get friggin' Rogue and Dazzler to almost break each other for his sake, back in the day. Elisabeth always thought he was kind of cute, and endearing, but come on.

"Everyone, I'd like you to meet Ricochet Rita," said Longshot, as the raven-maned lady waved to all present. The strung-out-Stewart-looking hero then explained to those present the new lady's past, how Rita Wayword was a motion picture stuntwoman who became tangled up with Longs in his earlier exploits; how she followed him to the Mojoverse to stop that world's enormous, eponymous evil; how they were captured, with Longshot's memory of her erased and she left to Mojo's scientists for modifications, including additional arms and preternatural powers and increasing insanity. What resulted also was a whiting-out of her hair and a destructive resolve toward all who did good in any universe out there.

Eventually, in this reality, Longshot managed, along with other members of his resistance—such as his old, ramheaded rabblerousing ally Quark, as well as Alison Blaire, who in this universe had emerged from the Siege Perilous in the Mojoverse ready to rock n' roll in more ways than one (and who was currently on tour in the Mojosphere, spreading a message of freedom and peace rather than subjugation and unrest)—all these heroes managed a critical victory in defeating and capturing the transformed Rita then known as Spiral. At that juncture, a scientist named Arize, who once worked for Mojo and who once caused the alterations upon Rita's form, but had since been banished for refusing that living landfill any more of his services…Arize atoned for what he wrought upon Rita by reverse-engineering her, somewhat, so that she reverted back to the Ricochet that she was before.

And just so the presence of the deadly dancer would not be missed by Mojo, Arize created a clone of Spiral—with a much lower level of mystic and destructive potential, of course, but with the evil and insanity extracted from Rita and intact. And this "Spiral" was the one just on the noh stage right now, who could not quite react ever so lethally in time when Kwannon and Matsu'o lashed out, the "Spiral" for whom the world's bottom dropped out from under her, and who was now trussed up underneath the stage, with Longshot's resisters guarding over her.

"God, but I was an ugly muff, from samurai helmet to all six arms," Rita mused, as she hazarded a glance back at the manhole. "But thanks to Long here, I'm my old, boringly wonderful self again."

For a split second, Betsy and Kwannon and Matsu'o chanced a slight grin, happy for Miss Wayword and her wayward, lucked-out companion.

Then they realized that without Spiral's sadistic magicks, the violet vavavooms might never be able to change themselves back to normal, as Rita just did now.

As if able to read the minds of these telepaths, Longshot flashed his inexplicably ladykilling smile. "Hey, don't sweat it, babes!" he said, beckoning back to the hole once again.

And there, levitating out of the gap, was the wizened engineering master Arize, making an appearance out of his longstanding hiding as grand as the return of Gandalf seemingly from the dead in another reality.

"So this is…" Elisabeth began as Longshot nodded eagerly.

"Yep! Everyone, another introduction: This is Ari…"

"Really, Longshot," cut in Arize, with a wave of his hand to interrupt and also gently to apologize for the jumping in, "I've decided to give myself a…change, of a sort. From henceforth I shall not be known as Arize—as my inspirations to revolution have fallen short at times, and even have run counter to resistance, in the case of Rita's original transformation—but I will now be known as Aline, as I plan to indeed align everything, set it right once more as it should be. I have done so with Rita, to atone for my past transgressions…and now I shall go ahead and do so with these young women here."

And it was then, in the ensuing minutes, that this new man "Aline" had worked his technology and mysticism, commandeering the Body Shoppe so that the Telly of Eternal Torment, which was to house Betsy's mind and soul till the end of time, became the Engine of Timeless Equipoise—the cornerstone of the device which would restore Elisabeth and Kwannon to their rightful forms.

And it was then, in the course of the following few hours, that the ladies were positioned in the appropriate bodypods nearby, the levers raised, the switches thrown, and through this chamber of consternation which once flipped these figures before, said figures were flipped back again so that the violet-tressed Asian lady who emerged from the experimenting environs was once more Kwannon, and

the purple-haired white woman who emerged from the Shoppe in the end was once again Betsy.

"I'm back," said Elisabeth as she turned over and looked with wonder once more upon the hands, arms, and other parts of her with which she enraptured the world from birth up to a certain moment in the late 1980s.

"I'm back," said Kwannon as she did the same with the gorgeous golden flesh with which she graced the Earth from birth up to that same moment about a quarter of a century back (from the reader's and this author's time…really, just a few years back for these ladies).

And the latter leapt into Matsu'o's arms again, ecstatic to be whole and full once again. The former thought to do the same with Longshot, by default, but she looked upon Rita and thought better of it, settling for a cordial embrace with Arize/Aline.

"Thank you, Master Aline," Betsy said, putting her hands to her face and just feeling so glad that all was put back in place once more. She could tell through telepathy with her intercontinental other that Kwannon so felt the same. "If there is any way that I could possibly repay you…"

"Actually, there is—and I was hoping for the services of not only yourself and your orchid counterpart…but also from the lunatic-locks lover she has," the old man responded, motioning to Matta's multidirectional mullet and the gangster threw up his hands at being mocked once more for it. "Also Longy and the mutants from your mundus could really be valuable assets for what we need to accomplish, as well."

With this reply, Arize/Aline huddled closer to apprise Elisabeth of his plan. She in turn piloted her psychic butterfly into his brain, understanding all of which needed to be done to end the threat of Mojo forever, in his verse and in others.

Within the next several minutes, the clone Spiral was pulled up from underneath the noh stage with help from Quark below. The six-armed sinister simulacrum moved over to the Body Shoppe and was positioned up against and around the gradually-recovering Mojo who was also carted to the shape-swapping store, again with help from Quark, so that when both boorish presences awoke once more, they found themselves hugging one another, tightly and unable to extricate themselves.

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO US!" screamed the boulder of a bastard who presumed to rule this wacky other world. "When my enforcers and producers gain wind of this, they'll capture ALL of you and stage a SNUFF FILM, with YOU as the STARS at my frigging behest!

"I swear to you spiny suckasses, It'll make _Saw_ look like _The Sound of Fucking Music!_ I'll…"

And then the redeemed head scientist made it so that the clone Spiral's mechanical hands closed over Mojo's motor mouth, while her other four arms were reinforced to hold her massive master ever tighter.

"You'll shut your turd-taking trap and allow me to work my magic," said said scientist as he turned some dials and worked some panels in the Shoppe. In the ensuing instants, the second Spiral and the first (and worst) Mojo screamed shrilly as they underwent an out-of-body experience very much not unlike that which Betsy and Kwannon had endured the past few years. Mojo especially went through an especially excruciating amount of agony at eye level, as the monster felt the top half of his face erupting from instruments dealing up against the ocular sockets.

"Now," said Arize/Aline a half hour later as he turned the heads of the two, still in their horrid hug, to face the man addressing them. "Since you saw it fit, Mojo and Spiral, to EMBRACE the VISION that you did—as abominable as it was, with what was perpetrated upon poor Elisabeth and Kwannon—you can now follow through with such, by continuing to embrace one another…one, with your freakish extra arms…and the other being the real 'looker' with frightening bionic vision…just like those made to replace the torn-out eyes of Elisabeth so long ago. All just deserts for what you perpetrated upon these purple people—and what you made me do to Rita—so long ago.

"But wait! There's more," continued the master oh so BillyMaysily, after dramatic pause.

"I'm sure the two of you feel a bit…disoriented…displaced, perhaps?...at the new development. As if…you're having an out-of-body experience?...well, that's what these poor Earthladies went through also, at least Betsy and Kwanny.

"Yep! Turns out that two—or beings beyond you—can play at the old brain-barter game. So now that our fearless leader with literally no backbone knows what it's like to have the verve of vertebrae backing him…and now that our dangerous dancer has been sidelined into spinelessness…it's time for you to be rechristened accordingly as well, as was I earlier this evening.

"You bastard, who barged in on the peace of this world…oh, you'll continue on with your programming of so many specials and feature presentations. But what you'll direct and produce will be that which is PLEASANT, that which is BENEFICIAL for the beings of our world, spine-sporting or no, to watch. Apropos to this development, as well as to the bodily exchange between you both, I have decided that the syllables of your names shall also be swapped, so that the blubbering blob of bilge here is no longer MO-JO…but, to reflect the quality of the programming which I, Longshot, and others of this world shall enforce, you are now to be known as MO-RAL."

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" screamed the form of the six-armed woman hugging the putridly-perspiring puffball in her arms—as of course, it was Mojo's mind within.

"And as for you, my dear," Arize/Aline said to the female figure in the hug from heck, "what you're left with, I suppose…is Spi-jo. Doesn't really seem to make much sense, does it—at least not to most people in our world, or on Earth.

"But you see, I, Aline, employed the utmost of my research abilities…performing a Google search on the name…and it turns out that 'Spijo' is the Christian appellation of many a man from South Africa. And you know, I am well aware that there are a few heroes, from my boy Longshot here to his girl Alison to Elisabeth in addition, who really missed the rough-and-tumble Anglo territories on Earth, far and away from the mind-muddling mental Mansions of the United States they knew as well.

"So what Betsy, and the others are doing now," continued the old man, as he noted the heroes working their way through a portal prepared by the Mojoworld resistance, "is that they're bringing the band back together. They're contacting some others from their team from the Eighties—Colossus, Storm, Rogue, Havok…and yes, ugh…Wolverine…"

Because any being from any universe could not withstand the Canuck's constant overexposure in any reality.

"…with Matsu'o and Kwannon are joining in too, with the latter taking on the codename 'Kocho,' which is Japanese for 'butterfly'…so they'll all come together, and together they'll effect an Outback X-Men revival. Only this time, instead of Australia, it'll be indeed in South Africa, what's known as the Rainbow Nation. And YOU are going to be the primary force to direct and produce their exploits, for the inspiration of resistance groups everywhere."

Again the voice of Mojo shrieked in abject terror from within the clone shell of Spiral.

Arize/Aline was nearly finished with the two. "And, Spijo, my dance-crazed dear…with the spineless one's mind inside, how ironic!...you will be Moral's right hand in the production of everything in your stupid studio. But I wouldn't stray from the script that the heroes and I have planned, for the Revanche X-Men (as I've named them, as South Africa's really known as the 'Rainbow Nation'…but Rainbow X-Men might not sound like the most…saleable, aggressive name for the sake of production profits)…

"After all, Moral, you're fitted with the same surveillance-enabling bionic irises that he fashioned upon Elisabeth to become a 'Spylocke' of sorts, and record what was going on with the X-Men for so many years, for the sake of the reign of terror here.

"We'll see EVERYTHING that goes on here, through your eyes, Mo-Mo. And if you _fuck it up,_ perform any rewrites or ANY revisions whatsoever…

"Let's just say that we'll all of us have our 'Revanche'—all of us heroes, in addition to a vengeful multitude from South Africa, the totality of them being the namesakes of the little lady here…seeking justice for the besmirching of their good names."

With that, Arize/Aline patted them each on the shoulder as the pustuley pair languished in their heretofore compulsory armlock. This continued to hold until Arize/Aline waved his hand, finally releasing Moral and Spijo from one another, each falling backward to the Body Shoppe floor.

"Come on, boss," said Quark from the other side of the portal, "we can't keep all the other Spijos waiting for us!"

"We're all expecting a masterwork of representation from you," said the old man, addressing his enemies one more time as he started to take himself through the closing portal as well. "What ends up 'in the can' will be something once-Spiral, as well as something once-spineless, if you disappoint."

And with that, the elderly engineer left the scene, for both of the mind-mixed monstrosities to gather themselves together and commence their cinematic documentation of the Earthen mutants' (as well as their allies') daring maneuvers.

AFTERWORD

A common thread throughout most of my stories here, at least in the X-Iverse, is that of rectification, of setting something right. Whether it's keeping couples together whom I felt should have stayed together, or redeeming a character who has fallen to some extent, it's something I've tried to do in a lot of what I've written in this genre. Here I tried to do both, as I wanted to set right the mind switch between the European-born Betsy Psylocke and the Asian-born Kwannon…Kwannon (I don't use the name "Revanche" in my stories (except for what happened at the end of this one just now—and that was just for the South Africa X-Team) because generally I feel that using the name "Revanche" will only confuse matters even more, given that the name Psylocke is used between the European and Asian bodies—even though as far as I know, only Betsy's been "Psylocke" and not Kwannon. In my stuff, Betsy, whether European or Asian, is Psylocke, while Kwannon is almost always just "Kwannon" no matter what skin she occupies—though I just at the very end of this reality's story gave her her own, new codename, just at the very end).

In terms of the character redemption theme, I tried to do this with Rita and Arize. Many people may not know about the whole Ricochet Rita thing; you can read more about it in the 1980s series Longshot #1-6. This series only explores Rita as a human, and does not go into her transformation into Spiral; however, Spiral "first appears" in this series anyway, in a time paradox sort of thing in which it's like Rita's future self attacking her (gee, we don't see that anymore (*cough* *Battle of the Atom* *cough*). It's a pretty good series; nothing amazing IMO, but okay. It always just bothered me generally, between Betsy, Kwannon, and Rita, that the Betsy's original body has been crapped on and discarded largely (again blaming Fraction for this) and no one seemingly in turn gave a crap at all about it (see my admittedly-pretentiously-titled Somnambulance story on this for a reference to said mutilation); Kwannon's mind died out in the Nineties, and again no one gave a crap; and Rita was transformed into Spiral…and I think either no one remembers or even knew about it in the first place. (I know Spiral and her involvement with Longshot etc has surfaced time and again since their first appearances over the decades, but still). In any case, as with my stories in the key of X before, and with a couple more to come, I just wanted to give some characters a happy ending regarding how they had fallen before, or what dear aspects of their lives/character's essences they had lost.


End file.
